The Medical Arm
of tbc
iSSioiiarv Service
Testimonies Irom tlie Field
^ PRINCETON, N. J. '
Purchased by the Hammill Missionary Fund.
Division
Section
Ninnber .
The Medical Arm
OF THE
Missionary Service,
TESTIMONIES FROM THE FIELD.
Edr,
^tmerfcan Boarli of C[r0mmfss{0ner3 for JForefgn fHtssfons,
I SOMERSET STREET, BOSTON.
1894.
V
T^HE following collection of testimonies in reference to the aims
* and methods of Medical Missions has been kindly prepared by
tlie Rev. Edmund K. Alden, d.d., who, while Corresponding Secretary,
secured these communications from able and devoted missionary
physicians in various parts of the world.
E. E. S.,
Editorial Secretary.
Rooms of the American Board,
Boston, June, 1894.
PRESS OF SAMUEL USHER, BOSTON, MASS.
THE MEDICAL ARM OF THE
MISSIONARY SERVICE.
TESTIMONIES FROM THE FIELD.
" What is the place appropriately occupied by the medical work
as a missionary agency ? Has it any perils on the spiritual side,
as related to the secularizing of the missionary work?" These
inquiries, or inquiries of a similar import, were sent out a few
months ago to several of the medical missionaries of the Ameri-
can Board, most of them having had a prolonged experience in
the service. The following replies which have been received are
herewith presented as worthy of careful perusal, being exceedingly
instructive and suggestive.
They all unite in urging a more vigorous prosecution of this
department of missions, calling for additional pecuniary support
and for an increase in the number of thoroughly educated and
thoroughly consecrated missionary physicians, both men and
women. A few thousand dollars each year, specially designated
by donors for the medical department, would be exceedingly help-
ful to the entire work.
Possibly some of the noble Christian physicians in our churches
and congregations at home, appreciating, as they may be expected
to do more than others, the value of this beneficence, may feel
impelled themselves to bestow, and to encourage others to bestow,
generous gifts for this important work. So may it be, if God will !
We present fourteen testimonies, one from Africa, two from
India, two from Japan, four from Turkey, and five from China.
FROM AFRICA.
I.
The first testimony we present is from Dr. W. L. Thompson, of
East Central Africa : —
" My experience in medical missionary work has been limited,
as it is little over eighteen months since I reached Africa and
during much of this time I have been travehng about, rendering
it impossible to follow the results of the little work that I
could do in this line ; so that this statement must be much more
the result of thought than of experience. Still I have seen enough
of the ignorance and superstition and the resulting useless and
cruel practices of the heathen of this land to convince any one,
it would seem, that the Golden Rule requires us, and that the spirit
of the Good Samaritan must impel us, to seek to enlighten and
help them in this as in their other needs.
" I fully recognize that their great need is of a change of heart,
and that this must come through a view of the Lamb of God and
a knowledge of his dying love. But how is this to be brought to
them ? It is not enough that we tell them of Christ's love. The
story will seem but an ' idle tale ' to them unless they see that
love exhibited in living form before their eyes. In what other
way can we so readily do this as in relieving their physical suffer-
ings? As we look at them, living in their wretched huts with
scarcely any clothing, they seem to us to be destitute of all things,
but this is not their view of their condition. In regard to these
things they are well satisfied. Should we give them clothes they
would not look upon it as an act of charity, for they feel no need
in this line. They would not feel that we were sacrificing any-
thing for their good, for they look upon us as possessing inexhaust-
ible wealth. They would simply consider that we wished to win
their favor, probably for some selfish end. But in regard to their
physical sufferings they feel a need ; they often suffer hopeless of
relief, and if relief can be given, they feel that that is something to
be thankful for, that they have been befriended. They become
more ready to listen when spoken to of their greater needs and
the provision which has been made for them.
" Then many of the most debasing and ensnaring superstitions
are connected with their theories and treatment of disease, and
to meet these superstitions it is desirable that one should clearly
understand the subject with which they are connected. So firmly
is the belief in some of these superstitions fixed in their minds
that it often occurs that one who has professed Christianity for
years, and has appeared to ' run well,' feels impelled, when some
sickness or calamity comes upon him, to seek help from some
of these superstitious rites. Nor is this so strange when we think
how much superstition still finds place in Christian lands and even
among Christian people of those lands ; but there it is limited by
public sentiment to less obnoxious forms, while here it rules as
a cruel tyrant. The belief in witchcraft is very firmly established.
When one becomes sick, some one must be to blame. The
offender must be ' smelt out ' and when discovered is most cruelly
treated. How can such a superstition be better met than by
showing them — placing before their eyes — the agent of disease,
showing how it may be introduced into animals with the same
deleterious effects that it produces in human beings ; that its
growth and development is as definite and regular as is that of the
corn in their fields, the ticks on their cattle, or the intestinal
worms with which they are all familiar?
"Closely related to overcoming faith in superstitions is the gain-
ing of confidence in the missionary and his message, and here
the influence of skilful treatment of their sick is of great impor-
tance. Not only does a right use of medical skill convince them
of our kindly regard, but the triumphs of modern medical science
often have the impression of miracles to them. And why may
thev not legitimately serve a similar purpose to these poor
heathen that the miracles of Christ and his apostles did to those
whom they taught and do to us ? Christ doubtless delighted in the
relief of physical suffering when consistent with spiritual good ;
but it seems equally certain that he had a much higher object in
view in the performance of miracles — to draw the attention of
men to the great truth he had to offer them and to convince them
that he spoke with authority : ' If ye believe not me, believe the
works.' Aside from this object it. seems doubtful whether mira-
cles would ever have been wrought merely for the relief of phys-
ical suffering. Why should not the miracles of modern medical
science help to accomplish these same great ends for the heathen
world ?
" The relevancy of the above considerations should, it seems,
be established by the fact that in the absence of the medical mis-
sionary all missionaries in this land feel compelled to treat dis-
ease. If they have never given any attention to the subject of
medicine, they are led to do so at once upon entering upon mis-
sion work. All such work, if skilfully performed, is found useful,
and of course the greater the skill employed (other things being
equal) the more good may be looked for ; while in like manner,
the results of unskilful efforts may be prejudicial to the cause.
" It is suggested that medical mission work ' may have its perils
on the secular side.' It would seem to me that if there is danger
here, it must be in the fact that men who are not really conse-
crated to securing the highest good of those for whom they labor
may be more liable to be attracted to this than to other depart-
ments of missionary work, though it is certain that this danger is
not confined to this department of work."
FROM INDIA.
II.
Dr. Edward Chester, of the Madura Mission, thus writes : —
" I imagine that I can work in the medical line better than I
can talk about it. The men ito speak a good word for the mission
medical work are intelligent friends of foreign missions, who come
and see our work with their own eyes and can appreciate its value.
" I have had now thirty-four years' experience of this mission
medical work in India. I have looked at it on every side and
have had excellent opportunities of seeing just what it is really
worth, as a part of the carrying out of our dear Lord's parting
command. And I feel that too much cannot be said in its favor,
and that it would be ditificult to exaggerate its benefits and advan-
tages to our entire mission work.
" I have never felt disposed to exalt any special mission work
over any or all forms of such work. Each has its place and is a
necessity in helping on the coming of Christ's kingdom. In
carrying on my own mission work in the Dindigul station of the
Madura Mission I give the same care and labor and time to
the evangelistic and educational and church work that I do to the
medical. I try to keep them all up to the mark, and have them
all move on harmoniously.
" The mission medical work is a great object lesson to the world,
which is specially telling and instructive to the non-Christian
people who surround a mission district in countries of idolaters.
The pictures having been shown, the lesson taught is love, the
love which Jesus the Christ showed in his life and taught in his
words when here on earth. As Christ Jesus was the great, the
model missionary, so was he the wonderful, the pattern medical
missionary. Just what his miracles of healing did for the world
eighteen hundred and sixty-three years ago, to excite gratitude,
to allay race hatred, to lessen the bitterness of opposite religions,
to overcome evil by good, so now, though in a modified quality
and a minimized degree, does the mission medical work reach the
hearts of men and lead them to think better of the religion of Christ.
" Forms of mission medical work may differ ; it may be among
men, women, and children, or exclusively among women and
children ; or it may add to medical and surgical work in the hos-
pital and dispensary the excellent and important work of training
up young men and women in non-Christian countries to be physi-
cians or nurses ; still the benefit and the influence and the blessing
are one and the same. My own firm conviction, after these thirty-
four years of active medical work in India, is that no mission is
complete or doing all that it might and ought to do to hasten the
coming of the kingdom of Christ that has not side by side with
its church and evangelistic and educational and literary, or trans-
lating and publishing work, a mission medical work, conducted in
the most eiificient manner possible, with an eye constantly not
alone to the greatest professional success, but to the widest and
most extensive spiritual good."
m.
Dr. W. O. Ballantine, of Western India, bears his witness as
follows : —
" In brief I may say that the reasons why medical missions are
necessary may be grouped under the following heads : —
" First, Christ our Lord commands them.
" Second, Philanthropy requires them.
"Third, There is wisdom in establishing them.
" Fourth, Experience proves their value.
" I would remark in general, in connection with this grouping of
the subject, that medical missions have been of great value in the
way of self-preservation, of self-support, and of opening out new
fields of missionary labor. Prejudice would have made it well-
nigh impossible for regularly ordained missionaries to have gained
a foothold in many of these places. The medical missionary has
entered such places, often at the risk of his life, and has through
the medical knowledge that God has given him gained the love
and respect of the people, so that permission has at length been
granted him to stay on and open up work there which had been
at first peremptorily refused him.
" Medical missions are a great means of enlightening and civiliz-
ing degraded and ignorant communities. Large numbers of per-
sons, especially children, among such communities die annually,
solely through barbarous and inhuman ways of treating their sick.
Enlightened medical practitioners have stepped in and saved the
8
lives of many such, and secured the undying gratitude of multi-
tudes of their friends and relatives. Caste prejudice in India
exists, as you know, in an aggravated way. This has often been
removed, and a kindly feeling established in many neighborhoods
toward missionaries and also toward the religion they profess
and seek to extend.
" Instances, drawn from my own personal experience, might be-
mentioned to illustrate many of these points ; but I must content
myself with only one for want of time. When I first went to
Rahuri, seventeen years ago, it needed the greatest amount of
coaxing to get the villagers rand townspeople of that region to
take medicine from a white man. After a few months they would
take medicine put up in powders or made up into pills. It
required the greatest amount of ingenuity to give medicine
always in this shape. Now all classes come freely to my dispen-
sary, and take medicine in liquid form, put up in bottles, as
freely as in the forms above referred to. The reason for this
was that their priests had strictly interdicted all liquid medicines,
as being especially prejudicial to their caste standing. Latterly,
however, they got around this interdiction by stating that any
water put up in bottles, especially when diluted with any kind of
medicine, was perfectly pure for any one to drink, even though
it had been previously touched by an outcaste missionary or
his defiled converts. This is only one instance, but it will serve
to illustrate the intenseness of caste prejudice in India and also
shows what patient labor and forbearance on the part of the
missionary, coupled with kindness towards all, whether friends or
foes, will accomplish."
FROM JAPAN.
IV.
Dr. J. C. Berry, of Japan, thus writes : —
" The medical missionary should be first and always a man con-
secrated to Christ's service, and with such a deep undercurrent of
Christian character and determination as will enable him to resist
the subtle temptations to use his unique position only for scien-
tific and humanitarian work. The difference between an ordinary
hospital and a missionary hospital should be only this — the serv-
ice of the latter consecrated to Christ. It should not be one
whit behind the general hospital in outfit and completeness of
organization, but in it there should be regular preaching of the
gospel and personal work for Christ linked with scientific and
systematic work in the art of healing. Every assistant and
employee must therefore be a Christian, and the medical mission-
ary must unify the aim of all by weekly prayer-meetings with his
staff and by setting a practical example of Christian work and
living to all. Thus conducted, the mission hospital remains a
great power in every land for good. I would further add, He
must regard himself as a co-worker with his brethren — the serv-
ice of both having but one ultimate object — the bringing of men
to Christ. I believe in a Service of Healing.
" It has been said that one of the marked differences in the
experience of a medical and a clerical missionary is that with the
former the people come to him, while with the latter he goes to
them. This difference, with the growing interest in Christian
truth in Japan, is not as marked as in most mission fields ; but
it is still a truth of course here. Last year patients sought reUef
at the hospital from 147 cities and villages outside of Kyoto,
some of them from remote parts of the country. To such I need
scarcely say the missionary physician has done but a part of his
duty when he has treated them professionally. To be a physician
in every sense worthy the confidence of his patients is of course
his first duty ; but when, by God's blessing on the means
employed, he witnesses pain removed and health restored, it is
a duty no less incumbent to impart a knowledge of that which
is at once a remedy for sin and a protection from sin. Idols,
temples, heathen ceremonies, and means for gratifying unbridled
passions await the restored patient as he goes back to old asso-
ciations, and the medical missionary leaves his work but half
accomplished if his patient is allowed to quit the hospital without
a knowledge of God's commands and of a Saviour's love. Dif-
ferent methods for accomphshing this have been previously tried ;
but during the year under review I have been especially gratified
with the result attending the presentation, in words of Scripture
as far as possible, of subjects embracing fundamental truths.
During the lesson hour it is usual to have the convalescent
patients assemble in a large ward, each with a Bible, and then,
with hospital assistants and nurses to find the chapter and verse,
teach the lesson under consideration by Scripture texts — an
assistant at the same time making note of these chapters and
verses as a guide for the subsequent private readings of the
patients.
" A number of interesting cases might be mentioned showing
the result of such work. One, an old samurai with disdain for
all religions, proud in the conscious strength of arm and brain,
and with contempt for the native faith, entered the hospital with
pulmonary consumption. The depth and power of the truth as
revealed in the Scriptures impressed him profoundly, and after
the first lesson he became an earnest student of the Bible. It
was interesting to watch the mental and spiritual awakening and
the deepening interest in the truth until he finally accepted Christ
as his Saviour. Since leaving the hospital he has been regular in
his attendance upon the service, and happy in his new life and
hope. Another, with a similar experience, was a school-teacher
in the city. Still another was a young man from Nagoya. His
parents were wealthy, but strong Buddhists. He became a Chris-
tian in the hospital, but fearing to return home before he had
received baptism remained, though well, until he could be
received to church membership. I have recently heard from
him as strong and active in the faith though partly disinherited by
his father. He is now a trustee of the schools under our Pres-
byterian friends in that city. These men were first impressed,
as one of them recently said, with the reasonableness of the
Scriptures. The words of God appealed to their judgment, his
love touched their hearts. It is a fresh illustration of an impor-
tant truth : * Man's word is lifeless and without power to enforce
itself; the Spirit of God is never absent from his Word.'
" I thus refer to our experience in this line of work, believing
it will not be without interest to those having the conduct of
hospitals on the mission field, and who wish to make them, as
most do, a centre of Christian influence as well as of scientific
and humanitarian practice. As Christian physicians in charge
of such hospitals, we have placed within our hands exceptional
helps to reach the heart. The origin of disease in many cases
is such as to bring strong self-reproach and condemnation to the
individual, an experience which is intensified and which hardens
and petrifies character if the suffering is borne, as it too fre-
quently has to be, in the midst of censorious and unsympathizing
relatives. It is just here I am convinced that much of the
benefit of the well-conducted mission hospital, where every
employee is in sympathy with his chief, is realized.
" Physical suffering is relieved ; this is much. But in my
experience this alone places the recipient under an embarrassing
obligation. It is rather when this is accompanied by acts and
expressions of Christian sympathy, which the patient soon learns
is but an application to human needs of the wonderful story of
divine love and redemption, that pain and suffering become trans-
rriuted into an uplifting and purifying agency, and awaken in the
individual true gratitude toward the hospital and those connected
therewith. One of our evangelists, after kindly visiting us a few
times, remarked : ' Why, there is no place where Christian work
produces such immediate results as here.'
"Our medical work includes the following heads: (i) For
patients in hospital, pupils in nurses' school, and for hospital
employees. These include morning prayers, which all are encour-
aged to attend ; conversations and Bible readings with individual
patients at their bedside ; the loaning of tracts, rehgious journals,
and Scripture portions ; a Sunday morning service at ten o'clock
in the wards ; a Monday morning prayer-meeting for the hospital
employees ; a general preaching service Sunday afternoon at two
o'clock, the people of the neighborhood being encouraged to
attend ; a Sabbath- school from three to four ; a Tuesday evening
general meeting for special study of the Bible ; and a Friday night
prayer-meeting for the nurses.
"(2) Service for the out-patients on clinic days.
"(3) House-to-house visitation among patients who have gone
out from the hospital after treatment ; and
"(4) Medical touring.
" This last form of service — one of the most pleasant in which
the medical missionary can engage, — has, owing to the demands
of hospital and school work, been very limited. The method
adopted, and one to which, from its applicability to Japan to-day
with the increased intelligence of the country physicians, I may
be permitted to refer to at length, is as follows : confer with a
few evangelists in a certain region, have them arrange for a series
of dispensary services in places where mission medical work may
be helpful in awakening or deepening interest in Christian truth,
and send forward a hospital assistant to enlist, with the evangel-
ists of the locality, the cooperative sympathy of the local physi-
cians, it being understood that the medical missionary will work
with the local physician and commit the subsequent care of the
cases, with copies of prescriptions, to him. Such cooperation
on our part is rendered further necessary by the legal requirements
regulating medical practice. On the day fixed the sick of the
12
region assemble at the place appointed — usually the Christian
chapel — and after a brief religious service work for them is
begun, an evangelist in the meantime talking with and distribut-
ing tracts among those in the waiting-room. At night a general
ser\^ice is held, four or five addresses, emphasizing the practical
philanthropic character of Christianity, are made, Christian tracts
are distributed, and finally especial attention is drawn to the work
of the local evangelist. The following day move on to the next
appointment, leaving the awakened interest, greater or less, to the
especial care of the Japanese brother laboring there.
" This form of medical work is expansive in its influence and,
if care be taken to visit such places as will subsequently be faith-
fully looked after by the nearest church or evangelist, becomes
productive of permanent good. Medical touring received much
attention in the early days of our mission and the time for its
usefulness has not passed. It affords to-day, as it ever will, the
same signal and pecuHar opportunities for presenting the gospel
message, emphasized by practical demonstrations of Christian love
and charity. We hope for increased opportunities for this line
of work in future."
Dr. Wallace Taylor, of Japan, presents his testimony in these
words : —
" The position that medical work occupied in general mission-
ary work twenty years ago in the Japan field, and what could be
accomplished by it, was very different from what it now is. Then
we could open up a new field by organizing a small dispensary,
and in connection with it have a place for general missionar)'
work ; we could keep this point open for general missionarj^ work
by visiting it and holding a clinic there once every two or three
weeks, while a clerical missionary could neither open up a new
place of work nor hold one after it was opened up. All the
places of work the mission had at that time outside of the open
ports were opened up and held in this way by medical work.
This continued for some four or five years, till the prejudices of
the people and their opposition to missionaries and their work
gradually wore away with their increased intercourse with Euro-
peans. After a time the clerical missionary could open up and
hold a place of work without the aid of medical work. During
these first few years the medical work was the main arm of the
13
work outside of the open ports. Without it comparatively little
would have been done. It was invaluable, and was so generally
recognized over and above the relief it gave to the sick and
needy. It was work that was at once appreciated and esteemed
by the people generally. At the centres where it was carried on
it fast broke down the prejudices and opposition to our religious
teaching and opened the way for general evangelical work. But
gradually a change came about as the people became more
accustomed to our presence and work, till finally the clerical
missionary could open up a place of work and hold it as well as, if
not better, than the medical man, and then medical work grad-
ually dropped back into its more legitimate channel of minister-
ing to the wants of the sick and afflicted and bringing them
relief.
"I continued to have out-stations for medical work which I fre-
quently visited, and where I did more or less evangelical work,
till by a gradual change in the conditions of the work I saw a less
number of patients on my tours than I should have seen had I
remained at home. And the clerical missionary having no further
need of medical work to aid him specially at any point, I changed
my plan of work, ceased medical tours, and confined my medical
work to the two centres of Osaka and Kobe. The patients
sought me, and there was no special advantage in my going out
to find them.
"This now is the condition of mission medical work in Japan.
It occupies much the same place here that benevolent medical
work in the United States does, being largely humanitarian. The
advantage that it gives the medical man is that it brings many
within reach that otherwise might not be accessible, and through
the relief afforded it gives access to the heart and opportunity for
Christian instruction. Another advantage not to be overlooked
is that those benefited by medical treatment and instructed in
religious truth carry their impressions home with them and
become the means of sending others that they also may secure
the same aid. Thus frequently our patients become the starting-
point of evangelical work off in remote and obscure places where
the gospel truth would otherwise not penetrate for some time to
come. Or if they are from places where missionary work is known
and already carried on, it gives an added power and influence to
the work done there. To all, and especially to those from remote
fields, it gives a practical example of the blessed fruits of the
14
gospel. After my work had become well known, in no other way
could I reach so many persons and exert so wide an evangelical
influence as through medical work. Take my report for 1892
when I individually treated and exerted an influence on nearly
2,500 persons, many of them from distant and widely scattered
places in the south and west of the empire, and where I had
nearly 13,000 consultations, and where, with my assistants, who
are Christian men, saw nearly 3,500 persons and had over 21,000
consultations — where we saw professionally over 800 persons in
their homes, and made over 2,500 visits to the homes of patients,
carrying our Christian influence with us as a Christian man
must, — and this, it will be seen, gives an opportunity of in-
fluence under peculiarly favorable circumstances that few clerical
missionaries in this country enjoy, though they do a large amount
of touring.
" It is true it is largely a work of seed-sowing and others gather
in the harvest, but it is not void of its legitimate fruits ; instances
of which very frequently come to my knowledge. Several men
who do considerable touring have frequently remarked to me
that they find persons almost wherever they go who have been to
my clinic and that many of them know quite a little in regard to
Christian doctrine, having heard it while attending the dispensary
or hospital.
" I believe in keeping everything native style so far as I can, and
hence our hospital and dispensary are native even beyond their
highest efficiency in the line of sanitary equipments and in
provision for taking care of the sick. Hence we are in close
contact with the people, and more in harmony with Japanese
life, and our services are largely within their means.
" Medical work as a branch of missionary work should be well and
closely followed up by Christian teaching and personal influence,
collectively and especially individually, in giving time and atten-
tion to the patient in the hospital and in following up the patients
attending the chnics to their homes. The medical practitioner
• with a large work on his hands has neither the time nor the
strength to properly attend to this. He must keep up the med-
ical side of his work if he wishes to make it a success, and he
should have the aid of an efficient evangelistic helper (a lady, I
beheve, is much to be preferred for many reasons) to assist in
rendering the Christian side of his work most efficient and
productive of largest results."
15
FROM TURKEY.
VI.
Dr. M. p. Parmelee, of Trebizond, Turkey, thus writes : —
" I can most heartily testify to the great value of medical serv-
ice in connection with missionary work. This value consists : —
" First, In the great relief from suffering it affords those among
whom missionaries labor. \\''hen the physician is so thoroughly
prepared for his work that he does not hesitate to remove cata-
racts or perform other capital operations in surgery, and is able
to grapple successfully with difficult cases of acute and chronic
disease, he may and does save life and relieve suffering to an
almost miraculous degree. And even when he is but partially
equipped as a medical man he may do much in the same direc-
tion. This is especially the case when one is located in remote
corners where the missionary is the only medical man of any
kind to be found.
" The value of medical missionary work consists : —
" Second, in breaking down prejudice and opening all doors
to the free entrance of the missionary with his message of peace.
This is Christlike. The man who is able to go about 'healing
the sick' is literally imitating his Master. By this means he not
only gains a listening ear, but he commends Christianity for just
what it is, a benediction to all men.
" You are aware that I entered the missionary field without
any special knowledge of medicine, and that I afterward studied
in order to supply a lack I seriously felt. If I were to begin my
missionary life anew, I would start out with a far better knowledge
of medicine than I ever had. I do not say that all missionaries
should prepare themselves in this way, but it seems to me more
prominence should be given to this branch than at present. For
instance, if in every station of three or more missionaries one
should be a thoroughly equipped medical man, my idea would be
about filled out. But such medical men should be, first of all,
fully consecrated missionaries, and afterward physicans, using their
medical skill for the higher purpose of saving men. The diffi-
culty of finding such men doubtless has been a reason why no
more medical men have entered this service. Perhaps, however,
suitable agitation of this subject would bring forward the right
kind of men.
" As to the possible perils of medical work on the secular side,
I cannot see that they are greater than in purely educational
I6
work. In either case the prevention is thorough missionary con-
secration."
VII.
Dr. William S. Dodd, of Cesarea, Turkey, gives his views as
follows : —
"The one great underlying principle of medical missionary
work is that it is to be an agency for preaching the gospel. It
is not to be mere humanitarianism. It must be used to open
hearts to the truth. If it does not do this, it is a failure. The
work of every missionary physician is to be tested by this. This
it may do in various ways. At the time of treatment the patients
and their friends, anxious to receive a benefit, may be induced
to listen, whereas under other circumstances they would not be
willing. Again, gratitude may be the motive that will lead them
to listen. A less direct working of the physician's influence is by
the reputation which his skill may give to the missionaries as a
class or to the Protestant community, thus bringing outsiders to
our services. Gaining access to houses otherwise closed, gaining
acquaintance with people otherwise inaccessible, accustoming
them to associate with us so as to dispel their false notions in
respect to us and our work, gaining an influence over them so
that they shall respect us and our opinions — these are some of
the privileges of the physician.
" x^nother most powerful influence is due to showing the true
spirit of Christ in love and mercy to the poor and to the suffering.
It is in this connection that the merely benevolent part of the
work shows its importance. Doing good to humanity is in this
country accounted a great thing, but it is carried out with a
selfish motive, that of gaining merit. When we can persuade the
people that we are trying to do good for Christ's sake it is a great
point gained.
" The medical missionary may be himself a preacher. He may
do his preaching simply in conversation with his patients as they
come to him for treatment. On the other hand he may do little
of this, but may do regular preaching from the pulpit and hold
stated services. Again, the medical missionary may be no
preacher, and may perhaps do very little direct religious work
himself, while yet his humanitarian work coupled with a consist-
ent life may enable his associates to do far more than they could
otherwise do.
I?
" The conditions of the work in different lands are doubtless
very different. I know that I find the medical work here far dif-
ferent from what I have read of such work in China and Africa.
I attempt to do very little of religious speaking to my patients as
they come to me for treatment. To Greeks and Armenians,
nominal Christians, the few words that could be spoken thus
would be assented to as a matter of course. Christian senti-
ments and religious phrases are at their tongues' ends ; but they
need to have patient instruction and to see holy living. To
Mohammedans direct words in regard to Christ would quickly
lead to complications with the government authorities. I find
my chief sphere of evangelistic usefulness independent of my
medical work, teaching in Sabbath- schools, occasional preaching,
superintending a young men's prayer-meeting, and especially in
the out-stations and villages in attracting crowds to the preacher's
house and to the chapel. While directly engaged in my medical
work I do not attempt to do much religious work. Often in
visiting the sick there is opportunity to enter into conversation,
oftener there is not. In my Dispensary likewise, which I have
just been enabled to open, I do not have any daily religious exer-
cises. When patients stay in my guest-rooms I have prayers
with them every day, provide them with Bibles and other reading
matter, have Bible pictures on the walls, and do all that I can to
bring the truth to them. This is, I believe, the method of highest
usefulness in medical work, namely, the hospital. It is for this
that I long, not merely with a scientific longing but with a spirit-
ual longing.
"The difficulties that beset the work are very great. The chief
of these is the money difficulty. I do not mean the funds to sup-
port the work ; my practice supplies that and more. I mean the
necessity of asking money from the patients. This necessity is
based on three grounds : First, funds must of course be raised to
pay my expenses ; second, justice must be done to other physi-
cians who live by their practice ; third, the people must not be
pauperized. The first of these is self-evident. In regard to the
native physicians here a word should be said. The state of things
is very different from what it was thirty years ago when there were
so few educated physicians in the land. Now there are many
who have been educated in Constantinople, Athens, or America.
My relations with many of these are of the pleasantest, and I fre-
quently consult with them. To do a professedly free practice
would be a serious injury to them, for even well-to-do patients
would at once take advantage of it. It is a proverbial saying in
this country that ' if shrouds were free, every one would die to-
day.' In the third place, to ask for money is a necessity for the
people themselves. I am not inclined to look on the dark side
of people's characters, but I believe that if I should leave my fees
to be paid out of gratitude, I would not receive ten paras in the
year. The sense of gratitude among this people is not strong
enough for that. I demand my fees as a right, and where I
think people can pay I refuse t6 treat them without the money
and often send them away. Well-to-do people will lie and resort
to every artifice to make me believe them poor. To encourage
such shameless begging would, I feel, be a wrong to the people
themselves. My principle is never to send any poor person away
untreated for lack of money. I do send people away untreated
who I believe have money but lack the willingness to give it.
That I sometimes make mistakes in this I do not doubt. But I
am far oftener mistaken in being deceived on the other side. It
often makes me groan in spirit to have to haggle over a few pias-
tres. I would be glad never to mention money at all. On the
other hand the fact that I carry on my practice on a business
basis as other physicians do gives me a standing as a layman
among them rather than as a clergyman, which, makes my Prot-
estantism less suspicious to some than it would otherwise be.
'• I would not have you think that I do a small amount of work
among the poor. Three fourths of the 1,300 visits that I made
last year were entirely free.
"The danger of secularization of the missionary himself is
great, but that is a temptation not confined to this branch of
missionary work. It is in my experience no greater than the
danger of what I may call ' professionalization ' for the clerical
missionary. Active religious work is the safeguard against such
secularization. Of the humane side of the work I have said
little. It is second to the evangelizing part, but only second.
Especially in cases where surgery is required is this most evident
and it is in this most especially that my work lies, for even the
best native physicians do little surgical work. I esteem it a
blessed privilege to relieve physical suffering, even if I have not
been able to impart spiritual instruction at the same time. In
the training of natives to become physicians I have done nothing,
and it is not needed. There are 2:ood medical colleges in Aintab
19
and Beirut accessible to young men ; and they most of them find
means to go abroad beside.
" In conclusion I wish to say what appears to me to be the
special office of the medical missionary work in this land at this
time. It is not in its relation to the Armenians and Greeks, but
to the ruling race. It is to become established, to gain name and
position, to gain skill and experience, to win love and confidence
among the Turks, in order at the present time to assist in remov-
ing their prejudices against the name of Christ, and in order to
have the agency established and working which, in the near
future when they shall be free to hear and accept the gospel,
shall be a mighty power to draw them to Christ."
VIII.
The testimony of Dr. Grace M. Kimball, of Van, Turkey, is as
follows : —
" Christ's original command to the Apostles and to the Church
was to go and preach, teach, and heal the sick. Therefore, in
my conception, the missionary physician stands as a member of
this evangelical trinity — a trinity formerly united in one person,
but now in our day of specialization necessarily divided into
three branches of the divinely ordained work. He needs make
no apology or feel no reproach because his energies are chiefly
absorbed by the physical necessities of his constituency. I ven-
ture to affirm that the most injurious mistakes that have been
made in mission work have been made through an almost super-
stitious reverence for so-called spirituality : and a corresponding
blindness to the real everyday, practical needs and problems of
the native community.
" As a work of Christian humanity, medical missionary work
speaks loudly for itself. We all at home have had experience
of the indispensability of the skilful Christian physician. We
have only to imagine our lives passed where he was not, to real-
ize what he is to us and what he is to immense communities
utterly destitute of any medical aid save that of the missionary
doctor. The number of valuable lives every year spared to
families which otherwise would have been plunged into deepest
poverty and distress, the number of children saved from lives of
total helplessness through blindness, and the amount of excru-
ciating suffering spared, leaves nothing to be proved as to the
humanitarianism.
20
" Its power in evangelistic work (so called because I consider
that the evangel is as clearly given in teaching and in medical
course as in any other) depends on the view we take of this work.
If we regard its results as adequately reported in each year's
tabular view, in the number of church members received or souls
saved, medical missions are a total failure. If we regard its
results as only to be shown by a broad view of the condition of
the people individually, as families, and socially — a view extend-
ing back over years and forward over years — if we look for deep,
far-reaching changes in the whole community, then we shall find,
I am sure, that the medical work has not had an inferior part in
bringing about these changes. The number of persons who defi-
nitely come out as evangelical Christians as the actual result of
the medical work of medical missionaries must be very small.
But the number of people who are brought into more sympathy
with that work and its official representatives ; the barriers that
are broken down, and beyond this the work that is done in elevat-
ing the conceptions of the people as to their duty to and care of
the ' temple of the Holy Ghost ' ; and the practical exemplifi-
cation of the Spirit of Christ : — these things do not go down in
tabular views ; nor can a single decade tell the whole story of
their influence.
" I believe too that the medical work is beneficent enough, per-
suasive enough, and Christlike enough to stand on its own merits,
and to be able to dispense with the often used concomitant of
tracts and dispensary preaching. I believe that there is a time
and place for everything ; and that among people of any degree
of intelligence and discernment this forcing of spiritual things
upon them when they are bent on physical help and often weary
and racked with pain can but be received in the vast majority of
cases either with the Oriental hypocrisy which regards it as the
price paid for benefit received or with a stolid indifference which
covers very pronounced but individual opinions. A few are
touched and genuinely so ; but would they not be as strongly
influenced without these ? We have no precedent or precept for
it in the Bible. The physician himself, conducting a work free
from the suspicions of proselytizing, will find and recognize
opportunities for teUing exhortations.
" I see much written in missionary literature that makes me
marvel. First, the wonderful number of patients which some —
many — missionary physicians are able to see and treat in a given
time. I should greatly like to know if any responsible doctor at
home would pretend to see from 150 to 250 netv patients a day,
— a general practitioner obliged to cope with every known human
infirmity. Could he make a conscientious scientific examination
of the case and its history, arrive at a diagnosis, decide on the
treatment judiciously, instruct the patient as to hygienic and
other precautions — all in from three to ten minutes, and keep it
up ten to twelve hours in the day ? If it cannot be done, is not
the missionary doctor in danger of playing the well-meaning but
actual charlatan? Again, is the practice, of giving advice and
medicine free to all, wise in its effects on the people or just to the
constituents at home ? Here again : a medical missionary goes
on an itinerating trip, visiting a large number of villages, staying a
day or two in each, seeing all the multitude who come, free, giving
each a dose of medicine, preaching the gospel, and passing on.
This makes a very teUing letter to the missionary magazine, yields
a great and fascinating excitement to the missionary. There is
an intoxication about seeing crowds around one, pleading for
help, kissing your hand, groveling at your feet, blessing you
with tears in their eyes. The people for the moment are enthu-
siastic and grateful, believing that they have received great good
at the hands of the missionary. But will there not be a revulsion ?
Patients with the colic or summer complaint or some trivial or
acute affection may have been cured. But upon the vast major-
ity little or no good will have been wrought physically ; and this
physical insutficiency will effectually counteract any spiritual im-
pressions which may have been received. And yet the price paid
for this has been a lavish expenditure of physical strength on the
part of the medical missionary, and of medicines and other med-
ical adjuvants, much of which can legitimately be considered
thrown away.
"All this in the way of a meditation, not as a judgment ! And
all arises from the deep conviction that we are fallen on days when
in every department of labor, sacred and secular, sound practical
principles and methods are demanded. The days of sentiment
are over, and facts are called for."
IX.
Dr. D. M. B. Thom, of Mardin, Turkey, thus writes : —
" The work of the missionary physician should be considered
under three heads : —
22
" First, his relation to his missionary associates ; second, his
relation to the evangelistic work ; third, his relation to the people,
or the humane side.
" ( I ) His relations to his missionary associates. A missionary
who has no physician associated with him is under a constant
strain in regard to his family. Should they be taken ill or any-
thing befall them, ' What am I to do ? ' is the question constantly
occurring to him. And when sickness comes it is such a strain
upon the nervous system as to- almost incapacitate him from his
regular work. Missionaries without a physician within call are
not able to do the work they otherwise would, nor are they able
to hold out on the field so long. It remains a terrible burden
upon their hearts in times of illness, especially if the case termi-
nate unfavorably. The thought continually comes up, ' Had a
physician been here perhaps our loved one might have been
saved.' So that as far as his associates are concerned, the
physician is a necessity and worth all that is spent upon him.
" (2) His relation to the evangelistic work. It is a question in
my mind if so much is accomplished on this Une as some glowing
descriptions from other countries and fields would lead us to
believe. True, multitudes are seen by the physician that could
never be seen by the regular missionary, and seeds are sown in
places where none but the physician can go ; and his life, methods
and conversation before the people ought to count for something,
for our lives ought to be 'an epistle to be read of all men.' If
one's work is in the hospital and he has it worked up to a fine
thing, his opportunities for reaching those under his care are of
the best ; for when a patient is under your daily care he will accept
anything at your hand, whereas if he were only an outdoor patient,
he may listen to you and he may not. I have repeatedly been
told ' Enough of that ; tend to our bodies now.' The evangel-
istic work is helped indirectly by the physicians relations with the
local government. His brother missionaries often have a surer
footing and a stronger hold on the people through the physician's
relations to ' the powers that be.' The doctor is a privileged
person with them and for his sake they will bear a great deal and
do a great deal that they would not but for him. Nor does the
doctor need to cringe to them, or serve them for nothing. He is
thought the more of when he charges a good fee for his services.
I speak from personal experience. My relations here with those
in authority have always been of the very best. Wherever it has
23
been my fortune to come in contact with the government author-
ities, I have never received anything but the most poHte attention.
So that on the evangeUstic side, taking all these items into con-
sideration, the missionary physician is a valuable auxiliary.
" (3) His relation to the people, or the humane side. There is
no language sufificiently strong to express the good done by the
missionary physician in this line. It is not, as a general rule, the
habit of a physician to speak of his own branch of the work,
but as the questions have been put to me I must tell things as
they are or the half will not be known. Almost everywhere where
the missionary physician is found there are no doctors who com-
pare with him in knowledge or skill, in surgery especially, so that
he comes as a Godsend to the people even if religion is left out
entirely ; and if he comes with both, the blessing cannot be esti-
mated. You might think from the foregoing that all the natives
flock to the missionary physicians. By no means. Do all our
enlightened American people pass by quacks and non-licensed
doctors? We must not expect too much of these people. But
the missionary physician has all he can or cares to do, even when
he charges a fee or takes pay for the medicine. We also have
other communities to contend with, Catholics, etc., who do more
gratuitous work than we are allowed to or than we think is wise
to do. And but few Catholics will go to a Protestant physician if
one of his own faith is found in the community, even if he be a
much less able man. The missionary physician's work from a
humanitarian standpoint cannot be gainsaid.
" As to the training of native medical assistants : it is desirable
if they would be contented with the training they can secure in
this country. But when they become ambitious and must finish
their course abroad I have my doubts as to its advisability ; for
example, I have trained four ; three of them are now in America.
One has been practising for over ten years in Chicago. The sec-
ond, after graduating with special honors and spending a term in
St. Luke's hospital, began practice in the same city, and has
since married an American girl and settled down for Hfe. The
third, not yet settled, talks of returning for the good of his
people ; the fourth remains at home only for lack of funds to
take him elsewhere. I do not think it pays to raise up medical
students in this land to swell the ranks of the profession in
America. According to my experience the training of native
medical men does not pay for the time expended upon them.
24
" As to incidents illustrating the value of this arm of the serv-
ice : they are innumerable. As mentioned before, the physi-
cian is a privileged person among the government ofificials. An
incident in point : our governor, who is now here for the second
time after an absence of a year and a half, was taken ill on his
arrival the first time. I was absent then. The city doctor, army
doctor, and a doctor of the Dominican missionaries were called in.
Finding him in a critical condition, they at once sent for the city
doctor from Diarbekir ; so that- on my arrival four days later he
was being seen twice a day by four doctors ! They had given
their prognosis that he could not live to exceed four days ; already
two or more of the four were gone when I reached home. I was
at once sent for. Seeing the patient in company with the four,
I made a critical examination of the case, and gave it as my
opinion that with good care he would pull through. To make
a long story short, I was retained for the case and my patient
recovered, and is a well man to-day. From that time to this he
has been a warm and stanch friend of ours ; has helped us
through a number of tight places, where if he had not been a
warm friend he could have made it hard for us."
FROM CHINA.
X.
Dr. H. T. Whitney, of the Foochow Mission, presents the
following historic statement : —
MEDICAL MISSIONS IN CHINA.
"I. The place of the medical missionary in mission work?
" Answer. In connection with well-established, with pioneer,
with evangelistic, and with educational work, and ought not to
be divorced from either.
"II. The value of medical missions?
*' I. The humane value: It saves life and mitigates suffering;
it also prevents, relieves, and cures diseases and injurious habits.
This point might be drawn out indefinitely, but it will be sufficient
to merely note the mountain-peaks and hilltops as we pass down
the century.
" (i) It is well to note that the medical profession bestowed
upon China its first great discovery in this century, namely, the
art of vaccination to prevent smallpox — the greatest disease
scourge of China next to Asiatic cholera.
25
" Edward Jenner, an Englishman, discovered vaccination in
1797 and made it known in 1798; and in the short period of
seven years after (1S05) Dr. Alexander Pearson, surgeon to the
East India Company, introduced it into China. The same year
he wrote a treatise on The Theory and Art of Vaccination, which
was translated into Chinese by Sir George Staunton and pub-
lished in Canton. He labored with untiring zeal for twenty-seven
years, when it became thoroughly established in the Kwangtung
province. Dr. Pearson's principal assistant, Mr. Yao, became the
leading Chinese disseminator of vaccination in China and at one
time he went by invitation, free of expense, to Peking to intro-
duce it there. Twelve years after Dr. Pearson's first treatise was
pubhshed Mr. Yao prepared one of one hundred pages to which
were appended three odes in praise of vaccination : one by a
governor-general. In thirty years Mr. Yao alone vaccinated
over a million patients.
" By the combined efforts of Dr. Pearson and his assistants the
art was extended to all the leading provinces of the empire.
The blessing to China of this one discovery it would be difficult
to overestimate ; and the name of Dr. Alexander Pearson will go
down in history as the first great benefactor of China of this
nineteenth century. Also of hwi should it be said rather than of
any one else that he ' opened China to the gospel at the point of
the lancet.'
" (2) To Dr. T. R. Colledge, another physician to the East
India Company, belongs the merit of establishing, first at private
expense and later helped by voluntary contributions, the first
institution in China for the relief of indigent natives — from 1827
to 1832. This work made a marked impression upon the Chi-
nese. ' The institution became the topic of conversation through-
out the provinces, and praises and gratitude were heaped upon
him by the beneficiaries and their friends.'
" He urged upon the various missionary societies the desirable-
ness of employing medical missionaries as pioneers in their
Christian work, and several papers which he wrote for this pur-
pose had considerable influence in directing attention to the
subject. With Dr. Colledge also originated the idea of the
Medical Missionary Society of China, and he served as its Presi-
dent for forty years.
" {3) While the humane labors of these physicians were not
performed in the capacity of medical missionaries, yet it was of
26
the same nature and equally as valuable, and beautifully illustrates
the humane aspect of medical missionary work.
" We now come to the first medical missionary work proper
done under a missionary board. The name of Dr. Peter Parker
as the first medical missionary to China is well known in both
eastern and western hemispheres and in three continents.
"Beginning his work under the American Board in 1835 in
Canton, he soon started lines of influence that resulted in phys-
ical blessing to at least 53,000 patients by his own hands, and it
is probably safe to say millions more by the hands of others. For
it was through his influence, in connection with Drs. Colledge and
Bridgman, that the Medical Missionary Society of China was
organized (February 21, 1838), which has already resulted in
the treatment of more than a million patients. And as the treat-
ment of one patient often means a blessing to one or two others
and sometimes to a whole family, it is more than probable that
the million patients treated does not represent more than half of
those who have been blessed. But in addition to this Dr. Parker
was the means of bringing into existence the Edinburgh Medical
Missionary Society (in 1841), whose influence in Great Britain,
India, China, Japan, Turkey, Persia, Africa, etc., has ever been
widening till now no adequate estimate can be made either of the
number treated or the extent of its blessing.
" (4) Dr. William Lockhart, of the London Mission, from 1839
to 1864 also shed a wide influence for good all up and down the
China coast from Macao to Peking. Tens of thousands were
blessed by his efforts, and he opened the way for other medical
missionaries and ministers to prosecute their work with greater
facility and success ; and his influence at home these many years
has been an important factor in the successful extension of the
noble influences of the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society.
" (5) Dr. Benjamin Hobson, of the London Mission, who
arrived in Macao the same year (1839) as Dr. Lockhart, did a
similarly valuable work in Macao, Canton, Hong Kong, and
Shanghai.
" He was the first to begin the preparation of Western medical
works in Chinese, by which he has exerted an enlightening
influence of wide extent both in China and Japan.
" His works on Surgery, Practice of Medicine, Midwifery, and
Natural Philosophy are said by one to be of ' incalculable benefit
to the Chinese and worth the labor of a lifetime.'
27
" (6) The humane value alone of Dr. J. G. Kerr's work in
Canton, from 1854 to the present, in connection with the Presby-
terian Mission, has nowhere ever been equaled, with the possible
exception of Dr. Parker's indirect influence in helping to start the
Medical Missionary Society of Canton and the Edinburgh Med-
ical Missionary Society.
" Dr. Kerr's work covers a period of thirty-eight years.
" By himself and under his supervision some 700,000 patients
have been treated, and about 38,000 operations performed.
Among these operations some 1,300 were for calculi, the value
of which needs only to be known in order to be appreciated.
" But in addition to this nearly all the textbooks, except the
Anatomy, that have been used in teaching medical students were
prepared by his unceasing energy and perseverance.
" (7) The names of Drs. McGowan, Gauld, Dudgeon, and
Osgood also stand out in bold relief among the order of medical
missionaries in China, and their humane influence alone can
never be properly estimated ; but they will be remembered by
their beneficiaries while life lasts, and the effects of their work
with those who have labored before them will continue on into
the next century.
" Dangers (under Humane Value) : —
" (i) That the press of secular duties will cause the neglect of
the religious part of the work; (2) that the exceptional oppor-
tunities for surgical work may create an ambition to develop a
professional reputation at the expense of the society supporting
him ; (3) that the natives may come to regard the medical work
as a vital part of Christianity.
" 2. Educational Value : The earliest Chinese medical works
were wTitten more than 4,000 years ago, and the latest date back
at least 150 years ago. This musty literature contains no accurate
theory or science of medicine, and hence is of no practical value
to the medical student.
" Through empiricism, however, some have learned the symp-
toms and cause of certain diseases and the value of certain medi-
cines for their treatment, but the theory of disease is so erroneous
and the treatment of diseases so involved in superstition that
grave sicknesses are usually aggravated by the native physician.
" Surgery, moreover, is not yet in its infancy.
"The need therefore of medical textbooks, medical instruc-
tion, and medical literature is only too apparent.
28
" A good beginning has already been made in the preparation
of medical textbooks. This work, undertaken first by Dr.
Hobson, has been ably and somewhat extensively supplemented
by Dr. Kerr.
" Drs. Dudgeon, Osgood, Dowthwaite, Porter, Hunter, and a
few others have also made valuable contributions.
"There have already been prepared in Chinese, works on
anatomy, physiology, chemistry, materia medica, pharmacy,
theory and practice, surgery, hygiene, and some special works
such as on the eye, skin, syphilis, bandaging, and diseases of
women, and a medical nomenclature to correspond. But works
on obstetrics, diagnosis, histology, medical electricity, operative
surgery, and medical microscopy ought to be prepared soon ; and
an Illustrated Monthly Medical Journal is greatly needed for -the
benefit, first of those who have already been trained in Western
medicine, and also for the many native doctors who would be
greatly benefited by it. Various other brochures and larger
works will also soon be in demand, such as History of Medicine,
Place of Medicine among the Professions, Insanity, Dentistry,
Dissecting, Nursing, Mental Physiology, Lady Physicians, etc. ;
and all such work will of necessity devolve upon the medical
missionary.
" The training of medical students began of necessity with the
beginning of medical work in China, and several hundred have
already received sufficient medical training to make them of
service in connection with hospital and dispensary work, and
many have already gone out to do good work among their people.
" As it is the rule with medical missionaries to train only Chris-
tians, the majority of those who have gop.e out have been of this
character ; and some of them have exerted a marked Christian
influence, while the rest perhaps have averaged as well as a like
company of Christian physicians in a Christian land.
" The more distinctive Christian character of trained medical
students has been more apparent in later years owing to the
spread of Christianity, which affords better material to select
students from.
" The greatest need of China, next to Christianity, is 300,000
conscientious native Christian physicians to meet the present
demands for relieving the untold and incomputable sufferings of
the people. If the 1 75 or more dispensaries and hospitals in
China should annually turn out 100 trained men and women, it
29
would be a large average ; but even at this rate how long would
it be before China could thus have one physician to each i,ooo
inhabitants? The condition of things thus shown clearly demon-
strates that the educational and literary work for medical mission-
aries is only equaled by the religious work confronting the clerical
missionaries.
" 3. Religious value. This cannot be measured by merely
counting the number of Christians medical work has produced,
though these can be counted by hundreds ; and if the proportion
has been at all constant throughout China, they can be counted
by thousands. Nearly all of the purely humane work, if done
in a Christian land, would be regarded as benevolent or philan-
thropic work. Being done in the way it is and in connection
with Christian missions, it is really under the circumstances
indirect religious work.
" But in addition to what has already been enumerated, medi-
cal missionary work prepares the way for extending the gospel.
It has kept and is keeping open many chapels that would other-
wise have to be closed. It has brought hundreds of thousands
within the reach of the gospel that otherwise, in all probability,
would never have heard it. It helps thousands to live a better
life though they may not openly profess Christ.
" Medical missionary work in certain places has been consid-
ered by some more successful than direct clerical work. By
many it is put upon the same plane as clerical work, and by the
vast majority of missionaries in China it is regarded as only
second to the direct work of preaching the gospel.
" 4. The opportunity and need of medical missionary work.
These extend throughout the empire — from Manchuria on the
north to the island of Hainan on the south, and from the island
of Formosa on the east to Thibet on the west. Or, if one pre-
fers, from Peking to Canton, and from Shanghai to Lan-Chao
(Kan Sun) province — see your cloth map of China.
" 5. Incidents of the value of medical missions.
" {a) Individual missions.
" (i) The medical missionary work at Swatow (English Presby-
terian) does the largest hospital practice in China, and has, with-
out doubt, produced the greatest number of converts in the same
length of time. The Canton Hospital (American Presbyterian)
comes next.
" (2) After these two it would be difificult to determine which
30
have been the more successful, but among the first should be
named our own Foochow work (equaling about one seventh of
the Foochow membership), and the Shao-wu work (equaling
about one fifth of the Shao-wu membership) ; also, the London
Mission work at Hankow, Tientsin, and Peking ; the United Pres-
byterian Church of Scotland work at New-Chwang, Manchuria ;
the China Inland work at Che-Foo ; the Baptist Missionary Union
work at Ningpo ; the English Presbyterian work at Amoy ; the
Canadian Presbyterian work at Tamsui, Formosa ; and the work
of our Dr. Porter at Pang-chuang and elsewhere.
" (3) There are a number of more recent medical works that I
have not sufficient knowledge of to give their relative success,
but quite a number report two, three, four, five, and ten conver-
sions in a single year ; and some of them include a number of
inquirers besides. So that it is safe to say that the majority of
the hospitals in China are blessed with more or less conversions
every year in addition to all their other worth.
" (^) Particular instances.
" During 1883 in the Swatow Hospital over 140 gave in their
names, men and women, as candidates for church fellowship.
"In 1878 a leper at the Swatow Hospital became interested in
the truth, and four years after it was found that he had influenced
about thirty of his village friends to give up their idols and wor-
ship God. From these five were selected and received to the
church at the first visit of the missionaries.
" At the Amoy Hospital an interesting case is reported of a
man who, seventeen years before, came for treatment. On his
return home he reported to his friends the kind treatment he had
received and the gospel of God's love which he had heard. In
consequence of this a few believed, and as the number increased
persecution arose and they had to leave the village. They
begged for a teacher and one was sent who gathered a congrega-
tion of about 100.
" As many came from a distance a new community had to be
formed farther inland. The work went on till seven such congre-
gations were gathered, numbering from thirty to upwards of 100,
all the outcome of the truth sown in one patient's heart while in
the hospital. This is probably the most remarkable instance that
has ever occurred in China.
" The case of Dr. Chin at Yang-chin-ken in the Shao-wu field is
familiar to you through our Missionary Herald.
31
" An interesting case is reported from the London Mission
Hospital at Hankow. A farmer brought to the hospital his two
daughters, aged thirteen and sixteen years, both totally blind from
double cataract. They were operated upon and returned home
with sight restored. While in the hospital they received daily
Christian instruction, and at length desired to confess Christ.
After a few weeks' probation and giving evidence of a change of
heart they were baptized. Three months after they returned with
several of their sick neighbors and their mother, who had been
blind over twenty years and was now forty years old. She said
she did not expect to be healed of her blindness, but she came
to receive Christian instruction. Her eyes were operated upon
and her sight restored. While in the hospital both she and her
husband were brought to Christ. They were baptized the Sunday
before they left, and so all returned home a happy Christian
family, father, mother, and two daughters.
" Quite a number of similarly interesting instances have
occurred in connection with medical work in China.
" (c) Personal testimony.
'• The Foochow medical work has exerted a very wide influence
for good and has brought many to Christ, not only in our own
mission, but we have had testimony from several members of the
Methodist Episcopal Mission and Church Mission of converts
in their fields who first learned about the truth in our hospital.
" Dr. Lockhart's testimony fifty-five years ago was : ' I say it
with confidence, that medical missions in China have been success-
ful in winning an entrance for the gospel to the hearts and con-
sciences of the people, which no other agency could have so well
effected.' About the same time Dr. Wilson, Inspector of Naval
Hospitals, in his Medical Notes on China says : ' Among the most
promising means now employed for reforming or rather revolu-
tionizing the moral, intellectual, and social condition of the Chi-
nese, we would rank the medical missions. They have a more
potent means than those who address themselves to the under-
standing to touch the heart and undermine their antiquated
structures, and rear in their stead institutions of light and
liberty ; substituting for the worship of idols adoration of the
true God.'
" Rev. Griffith John, a veteran of the London Mission, Han-
kow, says : ' Our hospital at Hankow is a thoroughly Christian
institution. I never enter the wards without feehng that it is a
32
great spiritual power, destined to accomplish a mighty work for
God in the centre of China.'
" Mr. John Lowe, late Secretary of the Edinburgh Medical
Missionary Society, in his work on Medical Missions well says :
' A good-sized volume might be filled with interesting records of
the triumphs of medical missionary work in China, India, Japan,
Siam, Burma, Madagascar, Africa, Persia, Central Turkey, Syria,
and in many parts of the corrtinents of America and Europe.' "
XI.
Dr. H. N. Kinnear, of the Foochow Mission, presents the follow-
ing views : —
" I take it that the medical missionaries of the American Board
of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, in most cases at least,
have a twofold work, that of being physicians to the missionaries
where they are stationed and that of doing direct medical mis-
sionary work among the natives. The relative amount of care
and time required by these two branches of work must vary in
each place, depending upon the number of missionaries, the
healthfulness of the place, the degree of development of the medi-
cal missionary work, and several less important circumstances.
In general I incline to think that the importance of the first part
of the work is rather underestimated as a rule. In the treaty ports
where there are other foreign physicians it is easy for the mis-
sionaries to obtain medical advice, but in many places, as in
Foochow, for instance, the foreign physician charges for treating
families by the year, preferably, the charge here being $ioo a
family and the same for each single person ; and if not hired by
the year, his fee for each call is ^5. At this rate it would have
cost the mission here $600 or ^700 for medical attendance during
this year, if there were no mission physician here. I need
scarcely ask you to look over the history of those mission stations
that have not been supplied with physicians. It may be pre-
sumed that they have been manned with consecrated men who
would stay at their post as long as it seemed possible, and yet
how much time has been lost in many of them by trips to the
ports or other places where medical advice could be obtained !
It would be hard for a person in America to imagine all of the
nerve-strain that must be endured by some devoted people who
have gone to the interior of China without being accompanied by
physicians. The knowledge that they are more exposed to con-
33
tagion and infection than at home ; that if wife or child is taken
ill, medical help cannot be obtained without a long journey, when
it may be too late to save life ; that if a member of the family
were to die, there would always remain the feeling that it might
have been different if medical aid could have been summoned,
and that perhaps all was not done that might have been done ; —
all of these reflections must sometimes be brought home to the
thoughtful man, and must bring a kind of care, notwithstanding
the most perfect faith in God, that detracts something from the
elasticity of a person's mind.
" Where there are several stations and only one man to do the
medical work, he is almost certain to be demanded, first in one
place, then in another, for weeks at a time, perhaps, so that
anything like doing systematic missionary work must become
impossible.
"This phase of our work is not by any means without its
cares. Each one of the workers of the mission becomes to us as
a brother or sister, so that we are deeply interested in their physi-
cal welfare for their own sakes. Then we can hardly fail to
remember how many loved ones at home are looking to us to
watch over them, and we have the best of opportunities to know
ho\v useful they are, and how hard it would be to find another to
fill the place of any one of them, so that their sicknesses bring a
heavier burden of care than the ordinary patients of a physician
at home.
" It is in view of this part of my own work that I have felt war-
ranted in asking the mission to estimate for help to my work from
the Board. The money that is given by the Chinese officials and
the foreign community is given for the work for the Chinese and
should be used for that only; even then it is insufficient to
meet all our needs, and is certainly insufficient to buy the many
finer preparations and more expensive medicines which are
needed in doing work for the foreigners, while many appliances
needed to promote the comfort of a foreign patient during an
acute illness are seldom or never needed in the hospital. To be
sure, many such drugs and appliances may not be used every
year ; but each missionary physician should be allowed a reason-
able amount each year to keep a stock of the medicine and
nursing appliances that may be needed in a//y emergency by any
of th€ missionaries under his charge.
^4n regard to the medical missionary work, I presume that the
. 34
testimony of all medical missionaries will be the same. It is not
indispensable in opening up new work, but, as is generally ad-
mitted, it is the most useful help. I suspect that a careful exam-
ination would prove that most cases of trouble with the Chinese
in newly opened stations have occurred where preaching and
teaching were begun abruptly, without any medical work, and
that the most permanent work and the places where there has
been most perfect understanding with the Chinese are places
which were opened by medical work. There are physicians in
China, probably some good ones, aside from the medical mis-
sionaries ; but the number of those having really good sense in
treating disease is probably small, and none of them offers free
treatment to even the most abjectly poor. So that while the
wealthier people do call native doctors, and will so continue to do
to some extent, the great class of poorer people, whose conditions
of life render them more liable to disease, and who would or
could not go to native doctors, are glad to put themselves under
our care. In regard to the opportunities offered it is hard for
me to make temperate statements. I sometimes compare my
work to the evening meetings held at the suburb church near
here. The church is open nearly every evening, the singing calls
a crowd, and the gospel is preached with good results, a few
coming more or less regularly until they are convinced of the
truth and accept it, while a large amount of seed is sown, that
must have an influence in removing prejudice, if it never bears
more apparent fruit. In the hospital we have much the same
service every morning. We call it morning prayers, but it is as
much a gospel preaching service as most of the evening meetings.
It comes at a time of day when the hearers are not too tired to
listen attentively and quietly ; we are very seldom disturbed by
having any one leave the room during the time as is so common
at the church. At the church many of the people come in led
by curiosity, and feel under no obligations to listen to what is
said, or even to be respectful to the speaker. At the hospital all
is reversed. All of the usual attendants come to receive a favor
from the physician, and do not care to lessen their chances of
receiving his best care by incurring his displeasure. The larger
number of the attendants are in-patients, who do not hear once
and then go away, but hear the truth every morning, not a dis-
connected text, but the consecutive exposition of chapters of the
Gospels, with direct personal appeals from all of those from whom
35
they are receiving care. They soon learn that a rehgion of which
such work is the fruits cannot be altogether bad ; that a religion
that the foreign physician believes and that prompts him to work
among them under such disagreeable conditions, and do for them
things that their relatives are seldom willing to do, must have
some reason in it. In short, they hear the gospel more regu-
larly, and in a state of mind produced by leisure, by freshness,
and by the spirit of the place, better calculated to produce deep
and lasting impressions than is usually the case at the church.
As to the results of the work I will refer you to my reports : the
one for the year ending March 31, being nearly ready to bind,
contains some items of interest to you. The patients come from
such widely separated fields that it is impossible to gain any
adequate idea of the total result of a year's work. If it could be
all gathered into one church, I am sure it would be encouraging.
Mr. Hartwell recently sent two evangelists to a town seldom
visited by missionaries. A patient from the hospital, who became
a member of the suburb church last February, is the first Chris-
tian there ; they found him regularly reading the Testament and
hymnbook I gave him, talking about the doctrine, and receiving
warm welcome and ready listeners in the villagers.
" Does the work pay from a humanitarian point of view? Yes.
How well? It can be estimated when the value of a pair of eyes
is determined, when we know what a father's right arm is worth
to the family depending upon it, when we know what may be the
result of saving a life. All of these things are done here every
year, and besides them hundreds of less notable things that
save suffering and useful members.
"These few points will assure you that I believe that the medi-
cal work is an important part of our work as missionaries ; that
under ordinary conditions it presents opportunities, to say the
least, as favorable for the presentation of truth as those presented
by any of the other methods of evangelization ; and that consider-
ing all things its results are as good, though not always as appar-
ent or as easily computed."
XII.
Dr. E. R. Wagner, of Northern China, thus expresses his
view : —
" First, A missionary, whether clerical or medical, must be
ready and willing to spend and be spent for the lower classes in
36
society. I doubt if this fact is made prominent enough at home
and I fear that many young missionaries are grievously disap-
pointed, discouraged, and perhaps have a feeling of being wronged,
because they were not thoroughly posted in this line. It is true
that some missionaries do have to do with the highest classes, but
in China at least this is not, of very frequent occurrence. I know
of no better preparation for the foreign field than that offered in
such an institution as the International Medical Missionary Soci-
ety of New York. If a man does not like the work among the
poor of a big city at home, or cannot make a success of such
work, he is almost certain to make a failure on the mission field.
" Second, He is the best medical missionary who can perceive
and follow up with the gospel the openings made by his medical
skill. I fear there is much lost to the work by the failure of the
medical missionary to do this, either from want of inclination, or
ability.
" Third, If a medical missionary is unfortunate enough to find
out that he is not a success as an evangelistic worker, he should
not give up striving to develop in this hne.
" Fourth, It is of the first importance that his work as a doctor
should be first-class. Imagine a second or third rate missionary
doctor making a success at this time in Japan ! To be sure China
is not Japan, but it is changing year by year in its attitude toward
foreign medicine.
"Fifth, The training of native medical assistants is an impor-
tant educating factor. Just as the clerical missionary finds that
the native helper can reach the people much better than he can,
so the missionary physician finds that a well-trained medical assist-
ant can do much more than he can in disarming prejudice and
making the people realize that the foreigner is among them to do
good and not to deceive or harm them. If the foreigner at any
time should have to leave his work, anything done in the line of
supplanting native quackery with foreign medicine is a real gain
in the cause of humanity and aids in opening the country to for-
eign influences.
" Perils on the secular line are common to the clerical and
medical missionary. The astonishing indifference of the Chinese
to any form of religious instruction from foreign sources, and the
disgust which their cupidity and untrustworthiness excite in the
foreigner, strongly incline the latter to spend more of his time in a
line more congenial to his tastes than that of forcing an unwelcome
37
truth on unwilling hearers. The medical missionary has besides
this the strong temptation to allow all of his time and energy to
be taken up with purely medical work."
XIII.
Dr, H. D. Porter, of North China, sums up his views as
follows : —
" I. The medical work is the divinely appointed substitute for
miracles.
"There is a sense of course in which we may use the word
miracle with reference to all missionary work. The changes
which have come through the gospel in the course of its wide
proclamation are sometimes considered miraculous. As the ex-
ponent of the work of the Holy Spirit they are indeed marvelous.
But these changes are the natural and determined results of the
unfolding of God's grace to men. I do not consider it legitimate
to call them miraculous. On the other hand the medical appeal
is to the same pitiful need of men. It is so direct and immediate
that the dullest can appreciate and rejoice in it. The appeal is
personal and carries with it, as did the early miracles, its own
demonstration which neither the recipients of the aid nor their
friends desire to gainsay, if they are able to.
"(i) The medical work is a fitting substitute for miracle in
the range of its influence. * The multitudes ' are aroused by it.
In our own station during the ten years or twelve since medical
work has been carried on we have reached directly and personally
100,000 persons. The direct influence is beyond our ability to
esfimate. In China alone there have been reached annually now
for many years a multitude approaching half a million each year.
"The first recorded miracle of the Saviour, which was a work
of healing, was wrought upon the son of a nobleman. The first
raising of the dead was the ruler's daughter. ' And the fame
thereof went abroad into all the land.' The most immovable
class was thus affected as well as the ' multitude ' who always
received and heard gladly. The work of the ^nedical missionary
has had a like fame sudden and widespread. At Tientsin, within
a stone's throw from our own mission compound, three great hos-
pitals are carrying on their beneficent work. The first was estab-
hshed in 1880, for men, in the grounds of the London Mission, a
splendid building upon the busy thoroughfare bearing a constant
testimony to the messages of the gospel. The second is upon the
38
other side of the same street a few hundred yards away, estab-
lished for women and children. The third is nearly opposite
the original one, with its noble front upon the same street.
Close beside these a fourth is in quiet operation, and adjoining
the third one mentioned there are now being erected a vast series
of buildings for the purpose^ of equipping the Chinese army and
navy with suitably educated and furnished medical men. This
remarkable series of benevolences has sprung from the partial
healing by missionary physicians, one a man and the other a
woman, of the wife of a nobleman. A Christian native physician
has been for many months the chief reliance of the imperial
court at Peking when serious and alarming disease has attacked
the members of the imperial family.
" (2) The medical work is the fitting substitute for miracle in
the self-conscious abihty of the physician to give the needed
relief. I once attended with another member of the profession
an old gentleman who had accumulated very large wealth and was
duly respected for his great business capacity and general ability.
No man in this generation has been more respected in that com-
munity than he. He had a hopeless disease. He had called in
no less than 100 native doctors. A single examination showed
the source of the trouble. Surgical relief could give a temporary
respite from pain and death. The confidence with which the
advice was given was marvelous to those whose dependence had
always been conjecture in place of clear and exact knowledge.
"(3) The medical work is the substitute for miracle in the
marvelous relief or cure which is effected through either surgical
or medical skill. Our native helpers, after seeing the many inter-
esting cases which come to the hospital go away with very great
improvement, say in a humorous way : ' The deaf hear, the lame
walk, the blind see.' They cannot say, ' The lepers are cleansed,
and the dead are raised.' But every other form of malady and
ill may be successfully reached. Nothing appeals more directly
to sense of wonder and grateful acknowledgment of ability than
the cure of the apparently hopelessly blind. We have a good
woman who acts as the very efificient matron of our hospital. It
is now some four years since she came some hundred miles or
more, a poor blind beggar led by a little son. She was in good
estate as an innkeeper until she became blind from cataract.
Hearing of the work and dragging herself painfully along till she
reached us, she sought for the help the fame of which had reached
39
her. The eyes were duly operated on. One was gone too far for
help ; but the other was easily cured by the operation and care.
The marvelous result was enough to give an increasing fame to
the hospital work in the region she came from. The cases where
both eyes are thus enlightened and healed are very numerous now.
The splendid courage of the man who in absolute confidence
begotten of superior knowledge cuts off a man's leg to save his
life, and who returns the patient to his friends healed and strong,
makes a tremendous impression upon an ignorant and suspicious
people. When such serene confidence is repeated unceasingly
through a series of years and through a multitude of appalling
cases of disease the appeal is closely allied to that appeal which
the Saviour made in his marvelous works of touching and healing.
The Chinese are forward in admitting the skill and power of
Western medicine. They say as their first thought: 'This is the
touch of the hand of a spirit or fairy.' It was this which made
the work of Dr. Peter Parker so distinguished at Canton. It' was
this which left the memory of Dr. Hobson and Dr. Lockhart so
green in the thoughts of men at Shanghai and Ningpo half a
century ago. It is this which makes the name of Dr. Kerr so
revered at the south, and the name of Mackenzie as dear to the
Chinese as that of the still more famous Gordon. It is this which
has raised the rank of women workers to a level with that of their
brethren, in the wide repute of Dr. Howard King and Dr. Reif
Snyder. The Chinese are horrified at the simple thought of any
operation which opens the abdomen for the sake of physical
relief. But they are familiar now with many cases of both men
and women healed of deadly disease for whom there was no other
resource.
" The most interesting case I have had in my own practice was
that of a large tumor of the superior maxilla. The flesh of the
cheek was divided, the bone with the protuberant mass was
removed, the woman retured to her home with scarce a scar upon
her face, a living witness to the spiritlike power of the foreign
doctor. In Western lands these matters attract no attention
because of their commonness. But in heathen lands wherever
the skilful touch of the medical man goes, the mystery and the
marvel of it make an impression whose influence even we are
unable to measure.
" II. The medical work is a signal illustration of the beneficent
work of the gospel. The missionary physician fulfils in a very
real sense the words of the prophet which the Saviour fulfilled :
' Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses.' Happily
the gospel message is not merely a message of words, it is a mes-
sage of deeds as well. The natives in China understand very
well that their own physicians never do anything but in a per-
functory way. Whatever is done is done for the meagre little sum
of money or the small gift that accompanies every prescription or
word of advice. They understand equally well that the benevo-
lent work which is done for them by the man from over the sea is
a matter of pure benevolence. ' Where did you ever see the like
of this ? ' ' What possible inducement can there be for his
doing this ? ' ' Can you find another one in all this land willing
to do such things for men?' 'Nothing seems to disgust him.'
* What the majority of men would never think of touching even
with a long bamboo rod this man touches and cleanses.' These
are some of the sentences which can be heard in every hospital
or dispensary. They are the humble tribute of the people assisted
to the good works of the gospel. The missionary physician comes
nearer touching the fountain of sympathy and influence than any
other. When one considers his opportunity and privilege, accu-
mulating as the years of experience go on, he may well be filled
with unceasing gratitude for the influence that is allotted to him in
and through his work.
"HI. The medical work has a direct power in evangelistic
work. The other day I was speaking with our helpers of the
terrible hostility in Central and South China to the gospel. Our
experience in Shantung has been strangely exempt from peril or
anxiety. There are bitter feelings expressed, no doubt ; but the
prevailing feeling toward us in a wide region is that of kindly
interest. Through these, now many, years people have been get-
ting accustomed to our presence and work. The gospel has been
illustrated, and the people everywhere speak well of us. In fact
they speak better of the foreigners than they do of the natives.
They have learned to have a manifest regard for the high tone of
moral fife, the utter absence of enmity and quarreling, which is
the special characteristic of the native life. This widespread
good name has come very largely through the infiltration of the
steadily pursued medical work. As to the evangelistic portion of
the medical work it is almost impossible to separate it from the
other work. That is, from the work of the preaching missionary.
The two are integral parts of a common whole and cannot be
41
separated. Still it may be said that the medical man has the first
access to the people. It often happens that the medical man has
a less perfect knowledge of the native speech and so is not in the
nearest relation to the people who come for help. If this be the
case, he is restricted in his best effort in touching the deeper
thought of the people. Happily, here we have not felt such
restriction and the medical work has gone hand in hand with all
the evangelical work. I think this may be said of the field in
China generally. The hospital work at Swatow, at Han-Kow, at
Hang-Chow, at Tientsin, and I may say here in Shantung, has been
signahzed by its earnest effort in the Hne of teaching the gospel
message to those who have been in attendance. One need not go
into special cases beyond the very few. There was a man here two
years since, a rough, crude man with a wild and boisterous speech.
He was a runner at the Yamen in his region and full of all deceit
and iniquity. He was here many months. He was filled up with
the gospel. He learned to read in a short time although over
thirty years of age. He became a very enthusiastic believer.
I hope he remains so, although he has not been with us for some
time. There is a man here now who has been here but two
months. He could read a little. He spends all his time in read-
ing the Gospels. He has been received on probation. I believe
he is a true seeker after the Light of Life. The record of each
year's work is a record of similar cases. From our hospital court
more books are sold than anywhere else. They are sold to per-
sons who have reason to be interested and awakened by what
they read. We have faith to believe that a signal part of the
medical work is the implanting of a new intellectual and spiritual
life in the minds and hearts of the scores and hundreds who
visit us. And what we see is no doubt the continuous story of
the most of the centres of medical work in the East."
XIV.
Dr. A. P. Peck, of North China, presents the following
statement : —
" We medical missionaries are placed in rather a delicate posi-
tion, as we of course would not wish to niagnify our office above
its true relation to the purely evangelistic department. Fortu-
nately I can escape the embarrassment somewhat for myself by
referring to some facts in connection with the mission during the
last decade, and to the expressed opinions of some of my colleagues
42
as to the value of the medical work as an aid in reaching the masses.
My own knowledge of the medical history of the North China Mis-
sion begins with the year i8So, when an appeal written by the
Rev. Isaac Pierson and printed in the Herald was sufficient to
draw me from an established practice in America ; for four years
I was associated with him at the station of Pao-ting-fu, where his
faithful and patient work laid the' foundation for the flourishing
station we have there now. There I opened our first hospital,
being the pioneer in the work in this mission.
" My colleague, Dr. H. D. Porter, who is m.d. as well as d.d., had
been for some years on the field, but being the only man of medi-
cal training had been called a great deal from station to station to
attend cases of illness among the missionaries, and had never been
able to establish regular hospital work. For the sake of absolute
accuracy I will note the fact that Dr. Treat, son of Secretary
Treat, had been for a short time in connection with the mission,
but had returned to America before I came out, and I understand
had never settled down anywhere. So that I may fairly say that I
was the first unordained medical missionary to establish regular
hospital work in connection with the North China Mission ; and
from the fact that since then such a department has been eagerly
sought for every station of our mission except Tientsin, where it
is not wise to add another to the many hospitals already existing, I
read in this development a practical acknowledgment of the great
usefulness of this department of missionary effort.
" It may not be uninteresting to note that since I came out seven
unordained medical missionaries, of whom two were ladies, have
joined this mission ; while in addition since the opening of the
station of Pang-chuang Dr. Porter has carried on regular medical
work until my transfer in 1884 enabled him to devote himself
mainly to the (to him more congenial) evangelistic work. And
we should also give full credit to the large and valuable medical
work done by Rev. I. J. Atwood, m.d., now of Shansi, who was
for a time in this field ; also to Rev. H. P. Perkins and Mrs. Per-
kins, who are now in America but soon to return.
" Thus from small beginnings the medical work has grown to the
proportions indicated, absorbing the time of a number of mission-
aries and making a large item in the yearly appropriations required
for carrying on the work of this mission. The fact of the growth
is the evidence pointed to in proof of the value set on it by this
mission. And I may refrain from quoting from my clerical col-
43
leagues any formal expressions of opinion as to the helpfulness of
the medical work. Proceeding to a consideration of
WHAT DOES IT DO :
" First, It blesses physically thousands of otherwise helpless
ones. In our own land only the poverty-stricken need such humane
provision. Those who have money can procure the best help that
science can give them. Here there is absolutely no other provi-
sion for the thousands who throng us. I have often felt grieved
that this philanthropic aspect of our work did not appeal more
strongly to the supporters of missions at home. Blessed sympathy
there so often expends its glad munificence in the form of build-
ing and endowing hospitals both by public and private charity
that it would seem in the light of the earthly life of our Lord this
might be considered for its own sweet sake a legitimate part of
Christian missions — for His sake and in His name ; and all the
more heartily, since —
" Second, It does this work at far less cost than such charitable
enterprises can be provided for at home. The entire cost of a
hospital like Williams Hospital, capable of accommodating loo
patients besides taking care of the very large dispensary clinics,
is less than is usually paid to endow a single bed in one of our
great hospitals at home. We do not have in our operating
rooms the finest appliances for modern antiseptic surgery, nor has
the attending staff the time and strength in the great press of
work to meet the exacting demands of it in its late wonderful
development.
" We furnish neither food, fuel, bedding, nor nursing to our
patients, all of which must go into the expense of a free hospital
at home. In the matter of drugs, too, it is my habit to use the
cruder forms, so that many of my patients are taking the same
sort of unpleasant decoctions that our respected grandparents
used to swallow, rather than the elegant but more expensive prod-
ucts of modern pharmaceutical chemistry.
"Third, The presence of a medical missionary gives the mem-
bers of the missionary force at each station constant and compe-
tent advice ; this is not a light matter either as regards the health
and comfort of the missionaries or the occasional avoiding of
expense to the Board. I think that during the past winter two of
the members of one station would have died had it not been for
very assiduous care given through a long and dangerous illness.
44
" Fourth, The medical work brings to our doors thousands of
people every year who would not otherwise come near us. These
are not all sick people ; those who cannot serve themselves must
bring some one of their family to wait on them. In one instance
this last winter five came to wait on an old lady from whom I
removed a cancer. So that the number of patients reported in
hospital does not represent by a considerable fraction those who
are reached by the presentation of gospel truth.
" Fifth, They are kept during the period of their stay under far
more favorable influences than if reached in any other way. With
abundant leisure, with friends at hand ministering both to bodily
and spiritual necessities, their home affairs and the cares of daily
life removed from their consideration for a time, the reception
and growth of new ideas is greatly facilitated ; while a sort of
gratitude for benefits conferred often makes them anxious to please
us by paying some attention to the instruction given, when other-
wise they would be indifferent to it.
" Sixth, The above remarks are more pertinent to those who
remain as in-patients for a time in the hospital than to those who
only come to the daily clinics. Preaching to these transient
comers in the waiting-room is more like preaching to the crowds
at the fairs ; but it is worthy of remark in this connection that more
Christian books are sold in the waiting-room of the hospital here
than are sold by the force of native evangelists in their continu-
ous trips to the fairs, large and small, for the express purpose of
preaching and bookselling.
" Seventh, The reputation which is given to the mission station
in the great heathen community by which we are surrounded is
very much better on account of the charitable work here carried
on. Among a people so capable of appreciating such an institu-
tion as the Chinese, it carries great weight and tends largely to
allay the feelings of suspicion and irritation with which foreigners
are so generally regarded in China.
" Eighth, The medical work recommends not only the foreigner
personally but the religion which he preaches. A curious instance
of this comes to my mind as I write. A young man turned up
not many weeks ago in my office, having walked a distance of
about forty miles ; his errand seemed to be to inquire about our
religion. He had never been here before, and to my question as
to whether he had heard the preaching of our missionaries or
native helpers at the fairs he said he had not. He was not
45
acquainted with any of our church members and said that so far
as he knew none of his neighbors or acquaintances had ever
been here for medicine. Upon my pressing him as to how then
he knew anything about us and our rehgion, he said he got it
from an oil-pedler who stopped in his rounds at his gate. As
there are no newspapers here, gossip is the usual means of carry-
ing news and the itinerant venders of all sorts, as used to be the
case with us, are important disseminators of intelligence. In the
course then of this accidental conversation the young man learned
enough about us here to pique his curiosity and impel him to
take the tramp and spend the money required to come here.
He dared not tell at home where he was going, and so had to
come away without any bedding, since to take it would have
attracted attention. But stealing away he stopped at a temple
where an uncle is the priest, told him where he was going and got
him to send back word to the family not to be alarmed at his
absence. Being curious to know all the hnks of the chain I
queried further as to the oil-pedler. Did we know him? No,
he had never been here. Well, then the natural question was how
did he know about us? The young man said that the pedler
learned what he knew from an innkeeper at a place about thirty
miles east of us where he was in the habit of putting up on his
rounds. Yes, but who is the innkeeper? Do we know him?
Oh, no, was the reply ; the innkeeper had never been over here.
Well, then, pursued the relentless examiner, what did the inn-
keeper know about us? The innkeeper said he had a friend
who had been troubled for a long time with a fistula, which the
innkeeper, being something of a doctor, had tried in vain to cure.
Finally the friend came to our hospital, stayed a few days, was
cured, and returning carried not only the story of the marvelous
cures performed here, but also something of the doctrine he had
heard. At the risk of wearisome prolixity I have traced the
windings of this little incident as they unfolded themselves to me.
What the outcome may be we cannot tell, but you will doubtless
agree with me that it casts an interesting sidelight on the social
conditions among this curious people and that it is much better
for us to be talked about in this way than in the style of the old
stories of digging out hearts and eyes and like cheerful rumors
which circulate in all parts of the empire and have provoked
many riots.
" Ninth, I hope that in reckoning the value of our medical
46
work no one would wish to estimate it by calculating the number
of conversions among our patients. The problem is by no means
so simple. It is a time of patient seed-sowing (so to speak),
x^nd yet it is a fact that there are very many of our Christians
who were first brought to us through the hospital. I remember,
many years ago, when I was stationed at Pao-ting-fu, a little old man
who came to have a large tumor removed from his neck. He
had never seen a foreigner until he came into our courts, and had
only heard of us through the reports carried away by patients.
Yet before coming he sold all his httle property to get the means
to come with. To the remonstrance of friends and neighbors he
only replied that the tumor made his life a burden, and that he
was going to try this foreign doctor anyway ; saying in the
expressive idiom of his vernacular, 'If he was cured well, he
could earn some more money; and if he was cured dead, he
would not need it.' His simple faith would not take account of
the dangers of the operation, which I rather shrank from myself,
so I yielded to his insistence and was gratified that he did not die
on the operating-table. After a prolonged convalescence and
when he had eaten up the supplies he brought with him, he left
the hospital suddenly at daylight one morning while he was still
in a dangerous condition from an intercurrent attack of erysipelas,
only saying to the gatekeeper that he could not think of accept-
ing my offer of food until he should be better, as he was already
under great obligations to us for what we had done, and he did
not like to be a further burden on our charity. We had no
acquaintance in the region he came from and so I sent a bottle
of medicine by some one going in that general direction, hoping
that it might, after being passed from one to another, finally
reach him. We heard nothing from him, and I concluded that
he had probably died. Months afterward, however, one of our
colporters found him, as he said, 'very much alive' at a fair; he
had not only entirely recovered but was preaching the gospel ;
this was the more surprising as while in the hospital he seemed to
be even stupider than the average ; but after all he had really
taken in a little of the doctrine he heard, and moreover had
bought a little book called the ' Trimetrical Classic,' a most elemen-
tary statement of the outlines of Christianity in a jingle of three
characters to a line. He had paid for it and he had learned to read
it, and he rolled it up in his bedding and carried it off with him.
When he got well he began going again to the little local fairs, as
47
all well-regulated Chinamen do in the country districts, for there
all the business is transacted and all that is going on in their little
world is to be seen and heard. He had been well known for
years as ' the man with the big tumor,' and when he came
around without it he was a great curiosity. But they said he
used to keep a big handkerchief tied about his neck and when a
little crowd of people would want to know all about it he would
say : ' Yes, I got cured up there, but they had a doctrine up there
too that is better than the medicine ; and I 've got a little book
here that tells about it ; so if you will sit down here and let me
tell you about the doctrine, then I '11 show you my neck ! ' So
his excited audience must needs put their curiosity in their
sleeves while he pulled out from his his little book and told the
' Old, old story of Jesus and his love.' I am glad to be able
to add that he was afterward invited to a winter class at Pao-ting-fu,
learned more of the truth, joined the church, and has ever since
been a zealous, warm-hearted Christian ; while his district, Po Yi,
you will find now reported in the station reports of Pao-ting-fu as
having a little church and being one of the hopeful out-stations in
this developing work.
"Tenth, The great numbers attending our dispensaries and
hospitals are far beyond the ability of one man to handle, and
this implies the training of young assistants. They are taught
from medical works that have been translated into Chinese and
this, with the immense clinical experience they get, rapidly gives
them a considerable degree of skill in the treatment of the
more ordinary ailments. And they are able not only thus to aid
the missionary but make useful companions for the preaching
evangelists in tours through the country.
" Some of the young men whom we have had in training have
not proved as competent or as worthy as we wished and they
have been dismissed. We demand a high degree of Christian
growth and culture as well as zeal and ability. Much to our
regret several have failed to come up to the standard and have
been dismissed ; so that these losses, with one or two deaths, have
kept our force only equal to the expanding work. In my judg-
ment the time has come for the consideration of the question
as to whether a medical education should not be provided for
larger numbers ; and young men of ability who have had some
Hterary training in our Tung-cho school may be selected for this
department.
48
" If the Christian physician is felt to be a power in a community
at home, how much more would he be here ! I came to China
with high hopes that the native practitioners of medicine might
be induced to attend our clinics, and seeing the advantage of
foreign medicines be glad to get at least a little superficial knowl-
edge of it, and so prepare the way in this^ generation for a more
thorough education for the next. This has been the case in
Japan, but Chinese conservatism is as yet too much for this inno-
vation and my hopes in that direction have been blasted.
"It now remains to be seen what with wise prescience we can
do for future generations, beginning with those who are children
to-day. A thorough scientific education as we understand it is
perhaps neither necessary nor desirable for this first generation
of such practitioners, but a plain, practical, somewhat empirical
knowledge of modern medicine is enough where the popular
ignorance is as yet dense. The profession will always keep in
advance of the general intelligence."
These fourteen testimonials from the missionary field speak
for themselves. They emphasize the importance of the medical
arm of the missionary service and make the call for enlarged
plans and for enlarged contributions for this department impera-
tive. The apostolic motto for this paper may appropriately be :
" Luke the beloved physician saluteth you."
■l^pl^L'3 Bros.
!^ "Makers
1 Syracuse, N. Y.
PAT, M. 21. 1908
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